


where just to go when it's twelve past one

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Coming Out, Dream Sex, F/M, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Genderfluid Character, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Second War with Voldemort, pronoun changes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:55:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29855670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: Tonks meets Sirius's partner when the Order of the Phoenix is convened. Unfortunately they've already met - Remus just doesn't realize it. A thank you gift for a beta.
Relationships: Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	where just to go when it's twelve past one

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oyyo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oyyo/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this fic - it was a fun idea to write!
> 
> Warnings: discussion of mass murder, people in the Order under a lot of stress not necessarily getting along per canon, Black family incest jokes.
> 
> Title from "Society's Cure" by All the Pretty Horses.
> 
> I've done my best to get the terminology and gender ideas, if not precisely historically accurate, at least plausible for 1995.

It was the unbearably hot summer of 1995. Tonks had joined a secret society and been dumped by their girlfriend in a confusing argument. Tonks had been trying to get Evelyn to admit they were together to her father for months, or Kingsley to talk to his daughter about the Order for weeks, but it had not worked, and instead there had been the breakup. Evelyn had not been entirely clear if she was breaking up with Tonks because her extended family was pressing her to get engaged to a nice, preferably pureblood man and she had given up resisting, or because Tonks had not quit their job at the Ministry when it became apparent what Fudge was going to do with it, having been panicked. Being dumped at once for being too radical and not radical enough annoyed Tonks and enraged them in equal measure, and they tried to dwell on that, and not the trapped feeling of their inability to explain to Evelyn: No, wait, I’m staying at the Ministry so I can spy for Dumbledore, come back!

Tonks had been talking about getting a flat, but this had mostly been to share with Evelyn. There was no use in getting one as an Auror and an Order member, they were never home. Instead they signed up to do night duty as often as possible for the Order and became too sleep deprived to think coherently about feelings, and hung about the horrible Black family home “cleaning,” by which everyone meant waging guerrilla war against a _house_. When none of these pursuits were available, they went home and badgered their mother.

On the day when Order duty, too, became too complicated, Tonks was off from work and Order business and therefore had gone over to Grimmauld Place early in the morning to join Molly Weasley, Sirius and the kids in scrubbing out and evicting Dark magic from another room. They got dressed in a baggy pair of trousers, boots, a T shirt. They - this was definitely a they kind of day - looked in the mirror and shrank their chest to nothing much and their hair to purple spikes, and clomped out before Mum said something like “Are you _really_ going to assist _Molly Weasley_ dressed like _that_?” 

Yes, it was true, Molly Weasley would inevitably at some point bring up the subject of whether Tonks would like tailoring lessons or perhaps needed some time off to go clothes shopping, but at this point Tonks was used to it. Even on days when Tonks was definitively female they weren’t going to go around dressing in Molly Weasley approved ways. 

They Apparated to Grimmauld Place, tripped over the troll’s leg umbrella stand, cursed at Walburga Black’s portrait, and started up the stairs to the latest cleaning project. It was the same way they had started the last five or six days off, since the Order of the Phoenix was convened at the end of June, when Harry Potter witnessed You-Know-Who being brought back. Tonks had been discussing this event so regularly that the words were now routine, but the concept was oddly clinical in their head, detached, resembling a real series of events no more than the sort of Auror report you wrote after things went bottoms up in the field and you had to make sure nobody would get blamed. Unfortunately, You-Know-Who wouldn’t stay that way.

Tonks made it to the first landing and was debating where to go looking for the others when Sirius opened a door and made them jump. Most of the Order members stuck to a few cleaned, relatively safe locations in Grimmauld Place, apart from the current front in the war against the house, but Sirius was different. Sirius, as the property owner, was keyed into the enchantments and besides had grown up here, and could apparently go around without the house eating him or trapping him in a loop of corridors with no exit or chucking something severely cursed at his head, and he often erupted suddenly out of sealed or invisible doorways. This was particularly true since Molly Weasley had come to stay, although Tonks had had no luck getting anyone to tell them what the original fight had been over. Ever since there had mostly been endless sniping on both sides.

“Tonks!” said Sirius.

“Wotcher,” said Tonks, pretending they hadn’t just jumped out of their skin, and accepted the cheek kisses the Black cousins seemed compelled to give each other. “You need to shower,” they added, wrinkling their nose.

“Not possible at the moment, the house has stopped the plumbing again,” Sirius said with unreasonable cheerfulness. “Remus is fixing on it while Molly and the kids work on another bedroom. Come meet Remus,” he added, going past Tonks and starting up the stairs. As they watched, the door he had just emerged from closed by itself, audibly locked, and then assimilated itself neatly into the wallpaper pattern of the landing until there was no door at all.

Tonks blinked at it, shrugged, and started climbing after Sirius. “Remus is your partner, right?” they said.

“Yes, my partner the terrifying werewolf and the best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Hogwarts has had in ten years,” said Sirius. He sounded proud, so Tonks didn’t point out that if it had been invited to teach at Hogwarts, the mold on the dishes in the Auror break room could probably also have made this qualification. (It had to have picked up a few things, since it had certainly acquired sentience and the ability to eavesdrop on conversations, and regularly spat terrifying globs of dirty water at anyone who suggested cleaning the sink.) “You keep missing each other... Here we are,” he said, pushing open the door to the toilet on the next floor. “Remus! Are you covered in anything horrifying?”

Sirius was on the whole pretty stable for someone who had been in Azkaban for twelve years and out for about two, but he had a tendency to swing between manic, obnoxious cheer and maudlin despair. It had noticeably worsened over the past month. Tonks guessed that being trapped at the site of the worst memories you’d been reliving probably did not help long term dementor exposure.

Sirius had gone into the toilet. Tonks pushed the door the rest of the way open with their elbow, banged their head off the frame - dammit, they’d lost track of their height today again - and, wincing, inched the rest of the way into what was actually a pretty large bathroom with a clawfoot tub and wide, marble sink. A man was on his knees in front of the sink, doubled over and muttering curse words at, presumably, the plumbing there, but at their “Hi?” he straightened.

Tonks recognized him unexpectedly and froze.

The man smiled politely. “Nymphadora Tonks, correct? I’m Remus Lupin, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’d offer to shake but I’m afraid my hands are covered in rather unspeakable substances at the moment.”

“It’s fine,” croaked Tonks. “I mean, I don’t use Nymphadora, you can call me Tonks. My mum’s Sirius’s cousin, that probably tells you enough.” He had to know all this from Sirius but it was something to say other than _Oh Merlin’s ballsack_ or _We’ve met, actually. At that club with the excellent chips, you remember, the one for gay men? I bought you a drink and you told me about your business trip to Egypt, and then you blew me in the washroom. I had a cock at the time, obviously._

Sirius was glancing between them, looking something between concerned and offended. Well, he knew Tonks wasn’t normally shy. At best they were behaving like someone spontaneously stupefied by attraction, at worst... Well, Remus was the only werewolf in the order. Remus obviously had not recognized them. He might at any moment - might he? Tonks couldn’t remember what face they’d been using, it wasn’t as if they often saw themselves, but they did remember him. At least Remus hadn’t been seeing Sirius at the time - Sirius being in prison - damn it, how did you bring this sort of thing _up_ in front of your cousin? What if they set Sirius off into another, worse maudlin swing mentioning it? 

“Tonks,” Remus was saying, pleasantly. Well, he didn’t know this was uncharacteristic of them. He also had to be used to people being arses when meeting him. Probably that had been _why_ he was in a muggle bar - well, that and the vastly greater opportunities among muggles to sleep with men. “I’ll remember. You don’t happen to know any plumbing spells, do you?”

“Er, no, I’m shite at housey spells,” Tonks said automatically, “Drives Mum mad.” Theoretically they could have brought it up if Sirius went away, but that would mean explaining not just the metamorphmagus thing but the gender things to a near total stranger who they had also once had casual sex with, in the middle of Grimmauld Place no less, where they might be set upon by a ghoul or a boggart or a Weasley at any minute, and then going back to behaving like professional, cordial members of the same secret vigilante organization, and Tonks could not think how to do it. They needed about four more hours of sleep and a thermos of caffeine and actual privacy if they were going to come out to the Order, especially as they had never before had to come out to anyone at all, discounting members of the same trans* inclusive book group in muggle London.

“Er, speaking of Mum, actually,” Tonks said, because this conversation was teetering on thin ice and they needed, badly, to regroup. “I’ve just remembered I said I would run a couple of errands for her on my day off - totally slipped my mind, but I’d better go. Nice meeting you,” they said, backed out of the toilet rapidly, and promptly tripped and fell halfway down a flight of steps before catching themselves on the banister. At least Sirius was distracted from offense by concern they had just killed themselves on the stairs.

This story was not, technically a lie, and to avoid making it into one Tonks Disapparated from the front steps of Grimmauld Place into a covered alley in London, rearranged their features again and strode off. 

It wasn’t clear whether the Death Eaters were already targeting Mum and Dad, but certainly everyone knew what they looked like and where they lived, and there was always a risk of Mum coming in for random violence from their side or the Ministry’s side, too. Everyone knew who her sister was just looking at her, unlike, say, Narcissa Malfoy, who went to high society parties and drank out of dainty teacups with the Minister’s wife and was certainly bankrolling Voldemort along with her husband.

So Tonks, who was not easily identified as using magical disguises and didn’t have a real face and besides was not personally known to most Death Eaters active during the last war, did a lot of the running of errands and so on lately. This also meant Mum and Dad were able to mind the shop together and avoid leaving someone exposed by themselves. Tonks was unsettled by the smooth, established way their parents had settled into these habits. It was too obvious that they had done it all before, for more than ten years, in fact. Tonks remembered a little but had been very young then and had not fully understood. The war had ended six months after Tonks turned seven.

Their family had never shopped in magical businesses when it could be avoided. Just after the war, Tonks had been sent to a magical village primary for the first time, because the tendency to change hair colors and face shapes mid-conversation made muggle schooling impossible, and their parents had not considered it safe for them to go to school during the war. She - she had been very insistent she was a girl for several years as a child, forcing her parents to get all kinds of paperwork amended and incurring by accident an adult life of her mother insisting that she had liked Nymphadora FINE at the age of SEVEN - had come home and asked her parents why they couldn’t shop at the Hogsmeade grocer’s, like all the other girls in her class’s parents did. The Hogsmeade grocer’s had chocolate frogs and color changing marshmallows and other wonders untold, which her classmates’ parents packed in their sack lunches and which were lorded over the less privileged children whose parents send them to school with home baking and fresh goat cheese and odd looking, unstandardized vegetables. But Tonks was not like either of those groups of children and her parents did buy groceries at the store so couldn’t they...?

Her parents had exchanged glances. Dad had sat her down and said, you know how there was a war, and the other side didn’t like people like me, because your grandma and my father who died don’t have magic? Or you, because I’m your Dad?

Tonks had nodded and nibbled on a biscuit. This was all familiar information. At eight years old, Tonks had still been getting used to being allowed outside unsupervised and the way her parents no longer walked with their hands in their pockets on their wands.

“Well,” Dad had said, rubbing his thumbs through his belt loops like he did when he was thinking, “You know their leader went away because Lily Potter and her baby Harry defeated him, and lots of them went to prison after. But not all of them did, because the government couldn’t prove who all of them were, and there were other people who didn’t go around hurting people, or committing crimes, but who thought that You-Know-Who had the right idea. They’re still around now.”

“Okay,” said Tonks, jiggling her foot, not understanding what this had to do with color changing marshmallows.

Dad took a deep breath. “And - some of those people who don’t like us or think we should be allowed to have magic own businesses, and one of them owns the grocery in Hogsmeade, so that’s why we don’t shop there. We don’t want to give our money to someone who wouldn’t let me in the store if he knew about my parents.”

“But is there _another_ store?” Tonks said.

“No. No, sweetheart.” Dad had run his fingers through his hair next and looked down at his hands. “There - used to be - but the Death Eaters, you remember that’s what You-Know-Who’s followers were called, they didn’t want anyone who disagreed with them to be able to make money. So they used to go around and - set fire - to businesses whose owners disagreed with You-Know-Who. There was a magical grocery we used to go to in Surrey, owned by an Indian couple - anyway, You-Know-Who had them killed. And a few others we know of. There were never very many, since most people in our world go to muggle groceries, or village markets... The magical grocers who are left are the ones his followers left alone. So that’s why we don’t shop at them, baby, they fought against us in the war, to try to kick us out.”

Tonks had been eight and had cried about marshmallows, but really about her classmates making fun of her for not having them. Dad had hugged her and pet her hair, and the next day Mum had gone and charmed her biscuits before school so that they would hover and spin, although she made it plain that this was not going to be an everyday sort of thing. But mostly when Tonks got older and went out in magical areas alone, and then went to Hogwarts, the image in their head from the conversation that stuck was blood, blood like theirs or Dad’s, being exchanged for a packet of pre-charmed sweets.

So, the Tonks family got groceries in the muggle world, and most other things that could be obtained there. There were exceptions for things that had to come from the Wizarding world, and a few businesses with owners on their side who had struggled through or come back after the war. For example, the Fortescue family was notoriously liberal, Florean’s sister had nearly been murdered by Death Eaters twice for her history writing, and Mum would stop and buy sundaes there if she was in Diagon Alley for any reason at all. But now it wasn’t safe for Mum to linger there, or Dad, and instead Tonks had to go grocery shopping in their haphazard way - Mum always complained, but Mum also refused to write down a grocery list because _she_ knew what they were out of so that was her problem - and duck quickly into Diagon Alley to replenish a couple of potions ingredients needed at the shop, ignoring the glares they got for the muggle clothing the same way they ignored people who glared at them in the muggle world for the punk clothing.

“I thought you were going to help the Order?” Mum said, eyebrows tilting dangerously, when instead they arrived home around noon with the week’s shopping that had been planned for tomorrow after work. If Mum was home, Dad had probably locked up the shop and was working on a difficult repair commission. Tonks relaxed a fraction, just knowing their parents weren’t in the magical world and at risk, and hated it.

“I was going to,” Tonks said, resenting the teenage way it came out by habit, and took the milk out to put it away. They were capable of acting like a professional adult with just about everyone but Mum, these days. Their face shifted, almost unconsciously, to reflect her now that she was around. That was the face Tonks had seen the most often as a baby, the face they echoed whenever they stopped thinking about it. It was habit to look like family. They had only stopped doing it in the depths of the teenage years, when they would have liked to attribute themselves to any passing milkman or perhaps the Loch Ness Monster, if only to no longer be the bastard muggleborn-sired Black.

They shut the fridge door and looked in the bag again, getting out cheese, and made it to a count of thirty or so before Mum said, “What happened?”

“I did something stupid,” Tonks said. 

“If that means you forgot rice again, I promise I shan’t disown you for it,” Mum said. “--Oh, here it is anyway. Did you remember we’re out of toilet paper?”

“Damn it.” Tonks slapped their hand to their forehead. “No, I forgot, I’ll go out again later. I mean, that’s a stupid thing I did, but it’s not _the_ stupid thing.”

“Well, out with it, then,” Mum said. “And don’t worry, if it’s just that I can go to the corner store. What’s the nature of this stupid thing? Did you shout at Dumbledore? All of us do it sooner or later.”

“Not this time,” said Tonks, bound by honesty, and before Mum could answer that said, “You know Remus Lupin?”

“Sirius’s boyfriend,” Mum agreed. “Nice enough boy, we knew him before, too, although not as well. I keep wanting to confiscate that horrible cloak and burn it so he’ll be forced to let Sirius buy him a replacement. The patches require patches.”

“Well,” Tonks said, “A couple of years ago - before Sirius was out of prison--”

“Mm,” said Mum.

“--And before I was seeing Evelyn--”

“I never liked her,” Mum lied loyally. Mum had approved of Evelyn wildly, mostly because Evelyn was much, much better at household spells than Tonks and had never once been tempted to wear clothing with safety pins stuck in it on purpose.

“Shut up, Mum, it’s not her fault I can’t tell her about the Order. But _anyway_ \- I slept with Remus Lupin in muggle London back when both of us were single and his life partner was in prison, but now he’s not, and I sort of - ran away when he introduced us, because I was afraid I’d upset Sirius reminding him, or cause trouble. I mean, you don’t just tell someone you’ve had a one night stand with their partner when you’re being introduced. And I don’t know what to tell Sirius and Remus now, they probably think I was rude because meeting a werewolf bothered me.”

Mum considered this. “I’m sure Remus will tell him,” she said, which was not as comforting as it was probably meant to be. “Sirius will probably think it’s extremely amusing when he does.”

“Remus doesn’t know,” Tonks said. “I wasn’t wearing the same face. Or...”

“Or?” Mum said, gently.

“The same gender.” Tonks made a vague gesture. “It was - you know--” They didn’t normally talk to their parents about this _either_ , although Mum had presumably noticed. Their parents had always been so angrily determined that they should be entitled to be treated like a normal child - to obtain an education, to wear any hair color that was natural on them, to have friends in London without the Ministry’s Statute enforcers battering down the door, and, when she had announced she was actually a girl whatever she came out as, to get that fact reflected in her paperwork. (Mum’s posh voice had gotten a lot of use that year, insisting that she had absolutely no idea how her daughter’s birth certificate had ended up marked male and with a completely incorrect name, but it must have been someone else’s mistake, she would find out who, and it must be corrected at once.) Tonks felt obscurely as though it would be a betrayal to tell them that they were not, in fact, normal. It wasn’t that they really thought their parents would be angry, was the point, they just didn’t want to talk about it, and they particularly didn’t want to talk about it because of some weird sordid _thing_ with their cousin who’d been wrongfully sent to prison’s boyfriend from the secret anti-Voldemort society.

Mum was gazing inquisitively and interestedly at them, in what Tonks thought of as her practiced Supportive Parent expression. Tonks took a deep breath and said, “I was a man at the time, so I _really_ don’t think he’s going to guess it was me, but I’ve got to tell him and Sirius why I ran away, and I haven’t got a clue where to start, and I don’t really want to talk to them about it in the first place.”

Mum considered this. “I think I’d better make some hot cocoa,” she said.

“It’s July and it is hotter than the depths of hell and also I’m not _twelve_ anymore,” said Tonks.

“Yes,” Mum said. “You are an adult, which means that the comforting hot cocoa comes with whiskey. Finish putting the groceries away and sit down.”

Tonks finished putting the groceries away.

“So,” said Mum, twenty minutes later, sitting at the table with properly made hot cocoa, with chocolate melted into milk, and a bottle of firewhiskey to top the mugs off. Mum had gotten a wind charm going inside and Tonks was covered in sweat from the shopping, so the effect was nicely icy and improved the cocoa. And Mum had been correct that it would make them think of all the other times they had come to her saying, miserably, “I did something stupid,” and how they had been fixed in the end. 

“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” Mum said.

“I don’t know.” Tonks grimaced into their mug. “I’ve been thinking about how to explain this, but I wasn’t really ready yet,” they confessed. “It’s not that I was - wrong, exactly, before, when I insisted I wanted to go to school as a girl, but I don’t think I was one hundred percent right, either? I’m neither, or both, or...”

“Which?” Mother said, gently.

“Both. And sometimes neither as well.” Tonks shrugged. “Do you remember when I tried to explain to you why I couldn’t just keep the same face and hair and everything, when I was little, and I said it felt like being stuck in a tiny cage, and it was okay for a little bit, but then everything would start to cramp and I’d be so, so aware I was stuck I couldn’t think of anything else, and eventually I’d change something, just to change something, so I could stop thinking about it? It’s a bit like that, I guess, but not exactly.” They took another gulp of whiskey. The alcohol gave distance to their feelings, and the conversation itself and its consequences.

“Is it a metamorphmagus thing, you think?” Mum said, frowning. “Because I wish we had been able to find someone else for you to talk to... I could go back to trying, Dumbledore might know someone I don’t.” There were very few metamorphmaguses worldwide and none in Britain besides Tonks for a few centuries. It was not unusual for rare abilities to surface in the children of muggleborns, though whether this was because their magic manifested them or because they were descended from squibs whose families had once had the abilities was disputed.

“Not exactly - I mean, it could be that that’s why me, but it’s not just me.” Tonks closed their eyes, concentrating on the feel of the magical breeze on their neck and stirring their hair, the warmth of the mug in their hands. “I do know other people like this when it comes to gender, it’s just that they’re all muggles, so we can’t... discuss things openly.”

It wasn’t like there weren’t cross dressers and feminine men and manly women in the Wizarding world, the kind of people Tonks’s muggle friends would call gender outlaws or trans* if they knew about them. But a lot of British cultural life had died in the war or fled abroad. Halfbloods like Tonks raised in the muggle world tended to go there, in isolated ones and twos, for their counterculture, and the purebloods who wouldn’t have had that as an option were now mostly radicalized against muggles, or at the very least not people Tonks would ever meet. The one exception was the head of their department, Amelia Bones, who Tonks could hardly have a chat with about inmost feelings. Once, a party thrown by some Wizengamot family had had Auror protection because of arson threats. Tonks had seen a singer they were dead certain was - oh, they didn’t even know what word to use - a drag queen, a transsexual woman, a transvestite. They had wanted desperately to talk to the band but hadn’t been able to come up with a way of doing it, standing in uniform across the hall, and attempts to remark discreetly on the music to their coworkers had turned into sex jokes.

“No, of course.” Mum frowned. “I wish--” She turned to the side, as though expecting to see something and then stopped, freezing for a moment. She did that sometimes, but never explained. When Tonks had asked Dad, he’d said he thought she was expecting one of her cousins or sisters to chime in. Tonks remembered that when Sirius was around before the war ended and he went to prison, sometimes he would fill in the gaps, so they supposed Dad was probably right about it.

They took another drink and Mum recovered and said, “I wish there was more of a social scene in Britain, especially among us dirty liberals. It _is_ true that women in the Auror corps always tend to be regarded as only sort of female, but...”

“No, I know,” Tonks said, and confessed, “I think it was part of why I wanted to join, you know, as a teenager. But it’s - it’s been good in some ways but in others it’s almost worse, because they’re all reacting to this weird psychotic pureblood culture - sorry--”

“You aren’t wrong,” Mum said.

“--Yeah, and I don’t even know what they’re talking about. They make this huge deal out of cutting their hair off when they graduate, or saying they won’t cut and they’re keeping it long, or which style of trousers they wear under robes, and I don’t even understand what they’re talking about.” Tonks shrugged. “And then if I want to I can just - decide to be a man - I mean, I could live the rest of my life that way if I wanted, which I don’t, but there’d be no way of telling the difference between me and any other straight man except that I _used_ to be - a woman, sort of... I was going to make this make sense before I talked to you, you know.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense, dove,” Mum said. “But yes, this was about Remus? If you just don’t want to discuss your feelings, you know, you could tell him it’s a metamorphmagus thing, it isn’t as if anyone in Britain will know the difference.”

“Mum!” Tonks sniggered. “I’ll keep it in mind as an option. Look, if it all goes horribly, can you tell Dumbledore, I don’t know, I suddenly succumbed to a bloodline curse or something? And therefore naturally I can no longer come to any Order meetings, being dead?”

“I’ll write elegies for you,” Mum threatened. “About your pale, deathly beauty - no, wait, should I say that?” She frowned. “Your pale handsomeness?”

“Mum!” Tonks shrieked.

Talking to Mum, despite the lack of firm conclusions, had helped. Maybe it was just having a chance to practice, with someone Tonks was nearly certain would not suddenly proclaim them a freak of nature, someone who had already seen uncountable deeply embarrassing moments without holding them against Tonks. They were obviously going to have to talk to Remus, preferably as soon as possible before everyone got worked up about it. Tomorrow would be best, although they’d have to get up early to swing by Grimmauld Place before work. Well, Remus was unemployed, so he’d be free, if he wasn’t at Grimmauld Place they could ask Sirius to contact him, presumably.

In the meantime Tonks, who was exhausted and hazy from alcohol besides, went up to bed at one in the afternoon and stared at the weak sunlight filtering through the shades. The best way of handling the conversation would be to put it as straightforwardly as possible and not work things up, they decided. Hi, may I speak with you, so I don’t think you’ve recognized me but it was me in the Station a couple of years back, sometimes I wear a male body, I hope it’s not too difficult to work together, and leave it at that. Let Remus - let Sirius - feel however they felt about it. It wasn’t as though Tonks could control that.

They shifted in the twin bed, thinking that if they weren’t going to move out - and it would be stupid to do it now - they should use their Auror salary and buy themselves a decent bed for the childhood bedroom. Bringing people home to their parents’ house would be unspeakably awkward anyway but just to sleep in... They’d had sex worse places, though. Involuntarily they pictured Remus on his knees in the muggle pub’s washroom...

That had been... two years ago, just before Sirius’s escape, the last moment when life had seemed relatively normal. Tonks had been through the Auror classwork and just starting on their year of probationary fieldwork under Moody, thrilled to be chosen as his last student, thrilled that some of the trainees who’d been the worst about their parents hadn’t graduated and had either left the program or restarted classes. Tonks fished their wand off the bedside table and flipped it at the door, hearing the lock click, then slid a hand into their boxers.

They’d spent nearly an hour talking about travel. Remus had a sort of thin, romantic scholarly air. Tonks remembered he had looked up when they - when he, Tonks - entered the bar, eyes lingering on the leather jacket and the piercings, which Tonks had a unique ability to rearrange however he liked. He wondered, shifting half-consciously to match the memories, if he had reminded Remus of Sirius; and if so, how he felt about that, about Remus sleeping with him because he dressed like his cousin had, once...

The alcohol made his thoughts skip around, but it softened the embarrassment of recognition, the awareness of the conversation coming. Tonks stroked his cock and remembered the practiced, graceful way Remus had gone to his knees and the feeling of his hot breath on his inner thighs. He had been good, very good in bed, much better than Tonks, although one positive side of being a metamorphmagus was being able to fake stamina at the age of nineteen. Tonks thought about Remus’s tongue and teeth and wondered if that was how Sirius liked blow jobs, and shivered, and wondered if it was fucked up to think about his cousin in bed like this. Well, Sirius was a Black, wasn’t he, it wasn’t like it would shock him. Mum was always saying that...

His thoughts were wandering. He hadn’t drank that much, but he couldn’t remember if he’d eaten today, either - damn it - this was the problem with pulling shifts like this, it threw everything off. He turned onto his side, jerking himself off and pictured Remus in the bar, his face framed by the edges of Tonks’s leather jacket, and then, newer, him climbing to his feet in the Grimmauld Place bathroom... Talk about an inhospitable location, but he certainly still had the same grace on his knees...

Dozing in the bedroom, he had a confused dream: Remus was blowing him in the muggle bar bathroom, which had a row of stalls on one side and the clawfoot tub from Grimmauld Place on the other side, and the wide marble sink. Sirius was shaving himself at the sink, but Tonks could see his eyes on them in the mirror. Then Remus said, “Pay attention, now,” in what Tonks imagined his teaching voice must sound like, and Tonks looked back down.

Suddenly Sirius was at his back, not at the sink, whispering in his ear; he said, “When he’s done, I’m going to fuck you.”

“Mm,” said Tonks gaspily. “Yeah.”

“Shall I do it as a man or a woman?”

“Me, or you?” Tonks said.

“Your choice, love.” Sirius kissed her shoulder. “But why don’t you give woman a try? You’ve been a man all night.” Remus was still sucking at her cock on his knees, but she had breasts now, which Sirius was fondling from behind, and he reached up to pull her head back by hair that had grown long, violently pink and curly, and Tonks groaned and came--

Awake, in the narrow twin bed. She was breathing hard, and she had shifted in her sleep to match the dream. Her head ached. She hadn’t drank anything all day either if she had forgotten to eat. It was dark out, but not late. The bedside clock read nine PM. Grimacing, she got out of bed to shower and get the sheets into the laundry, and find a headache potion.

Doing too many nights at once was mostly terrible, but sometimes she got into a rhythm where the sleep deprivation and the mild insanity of stress made her feel good, exhilarated and hyped up like going dancing or like combat practice. She hit her stride around midnight when her parents were in bed and paced around the kitchen, feeling caged. She couldn’t go out clubbing like she might have in school, because of the war, it would be stupid. She couldn’t call Evelyn either, dammit. Tonks spent all of five minutes trying to fold laundry before giving up and getting her cloak on. There was a decent shot Sirius would be awake at Grimmauld Place, and if not she could always go practice Stunners on the doxies in the drawing room. The house was big enough - enchanted enough - she wouldn’t wake anyone up if she stayed away from their bedrooms.

Inside, sure enough, she heard voices down the stairs to the kitchen and clattered down them. Sirius was there, and Remus; there was a bottle of whiskey out on the table and Sirius looked strange and tired in the candle light. Tonks froze for a second. But they had already heard her, Sirius was looking up, and it might have just been a trick of the light because he looked as pleased as he ever did to see her. “Tonks!” he said. “Did Andy flay you over whatever you forgot?”

“She says she won’t disown me for forgetting the rice, this time,” Tonks said, rounding the end of the stairs without tripping, for once, and promptly bashed her elbow on the counter on her way in. “Damn it--”

“Are you all right?” Remus said. He was using his soft scholarly voice, which he incidentally also used for dirty talk and Tonks hoped she wasn’t blushing. 

“Fine, just clumsy--” Tonks rubbed her elbow, tripped over somebody’s boot lying on the kitchen floor and caught herself, then hopped angrily to the table. Sirius, who had risen, pulled a chair out with exaggerated care. “Fuck you,” she told him and sat down, gratefully.

“Well, we _are_ family,” Sirius said, fluttering his eyelashes exaggeratedly. Tonks swatted his head and ducked his answering elbow. “Don’t you have to be up for work tomorrow, or are you on night duty tonight?”

“I fell asleep when I got home and got up in the evening, night shift is killing my brain,” Tonks said. Sirius seemed to be in one of his good moods after all, and she could see it would be easy to be swept into easy discussion and pretend nothing had happened after all. Maybe she shouldn’t tell them? But she could see Remus looking down out of the corner of her eye, and damn it, he did have a right to know, she supposed.

“Listen,” she said, turning to him and trying to ignore Sirius. “I’m sorry about earlier. I need to tell you something.”

“It’s nothing, you were very polite about it,” Remus said, smiling affably.

“It’s not that. You know that I’m a metamorphmagus, probably,” Tonks said and hurried on, lest he get the wrong impression about why she was mentioning it, “Well, we’ve met before, actually, I just hadn’t expected it and it surprised me.” 

Now he was frowning, but thoughtfully, presumably trying to guess when. Tonks hesitated; that had been the easy enough part, but now she would have to explain the rest. Unthinkingly she glanced back at Sirius, as though he could help her with this.

He smiled back, looking puzzled, but stood up. “I’ll get some tea started,” he said, snagging the firewhiskey and, thankfully, putting it back in the cupboard instead of down his throat before he went to the stove. 

“If it was with MLE,” Remus said, too cautiously, “I think I might rather not know, thank you.”

“It wasn’t,” Tonks said, feeling rather appalled to be confronted with a _worse_ possibility. “I - I don’t know if you know much about metamorphmagus, but - well. Some of the rumors are true, we can change - everything.” It would have been easier to explain if she could count on having any sort of vocabulary in common with Remus and Sirius on the subject, although she supposed they both used the words gay and bisexual so they must have _some_ familiarity with muggle ideas about things. “I’m not always a woman,” she said, and watched Remus’s head jerk up with recognition. 

“Then I met you as a man,” Remus said, cautiously.

“Yes. At the Station,” Tonks said, almost apologetically, so that he could decide whether Sirius was going to find out they’d had sex.

“Ah.” Remus looked over to Sirius, filling the kettle from his wand. “You seem to have been right about one thing,” he said. “Apparently I _do_ need a Black in my life at all times.’

Sirius whooped, echoing through the stone kitchen and making Tonks jump. “I’m happy to see my little cousin has good taste,” he said, grinning lecherously at them. Tonks wadded up a napkin from the table and threw it at him. 

“--You didn’t _recognize_ her, Moony? --Sorry, is it her?” he asked Tonks. “We had some friends who were - ah, damn it, I have no idea what the kids are calling it now, but at the time it was usually transsexual, or cross-dresser or whatever, back in the seventies. I keep suggesting the Ministry isn’t going to be looking for me in muggle bars, but Remus says he won’t enjoy it in the slightest if he’s watching for an Auror to come in and arrest us in the middle of the disco - and the kids _don’t_ do disco anymore, do you?”

“Right now it’s she,” she said, considered objecting either to Sirius calling her a kid or the sheer mental image of Sirius Black, Wanted Death Eater at a disco and shelved the whole subject far in the back of her head and shrugged instead. “Not always. It might be better if you didn’t use anything else around the Order, though, I don’t know how the Weasleys would take it.”

“It’s not a conversation I’d personally enjoy having in front of Severus Snape,” Remus agreed. “--The kettle’s going, Sirius.”

“Right, ta!” Sirius turned to pour the water. “Do you know, Remus, you could tell Molly you’d dated Tonks here, and she might stop suggesting other witches for you.”

“I think Tonks might have something to say about that,” Remus said, firmly.

“I’m not fake dating _either_ of you,” Tonks said. “Or anyone else.”

“Right, I’m being an arse,” Sirius said, surprising Tonks until he said, “Andromeda mentioned, you had a closeted girl end things over it recently?”

“Oh.” Tonks had no idea her mother was discussing her dating life with Sirius. She swallowed and wished the tea was ready. “Yeah, she’s getting tired of holding out against her family, I think.” Obviously Mum had not mentioned it was Kingsley’s daughter. “I knew it was coming, it’s just worse that it’s now.”

“And here we are, making fun of you.” Sirius brought the tea over and put a hand on her shoulder, sympathetic and familial. Tonks felt a jump in her stomach and hated it immediately. There were actual incest jokes about her family, and here she was, living them out. “I’m sorry, it’s never fun when things don’t work out, especially when it’s because of politics and family instead of the relationship.”

“Wait, who did you...?” Tonks frowned; she knew he and Remus had been together before, and it wasn’t as if Sirius had had, frankly, a lot of time to date.

“He and Lily broke up sixth year after his grandfather sent her a letter threatening to kill her,” Remus said. Tonks choked. “He told her he understood and went upstairs to cry for hours. James and - James was up all night and threatened to murder him on the spot if another girl ever dumped him, so of course, he said, he had to ask me out after. For his own safety.”

“And as you see, I’ve never been murdered yet,” Sirius said, spreading his hands. “It worked excellently.”

Tonks snorted. “I’m sorry if the fact that I’ve slept with Remus makes things weird.”

They exchanged glances over her shoulder. “It shouldn’t,” Remus said. “Unless it makes you uncomfortable to have had a one night stand with your cousin’s partner...”

“She’s a _Black_ ,” Sirius said, although Tonks was in fact a Tonks, and added to her, “Don’t worry about it, Remus has plenty to hold over my head if I ever considered being offended.”

“Tonks may not share the family predilections,” Remus said dryly.

“I think it’s a little late for that,” Tonks said, and slapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry - I mentioned, night shift, crazy?”

Sirius was amused. “Well, you said you wouldn’t _fake_ date _either_ of us,” he said, thoughtful, looking over her shoulder at Remus again. “What about a trial run on both of us?”

“I’d consider it.” Tonks wondered if she had fallen asleep again.

“I suppose it’s only fair,” Remus said behind her, affably. He reached around her to lace his fingers with Sirius’s and placed their joined hands on Tonks’s thigh.

**Author's Note:**

> Liked this? [Reblog it](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/644797325274923008/where-just-to-go-when-its-twelve-past-one) or come talk to me on tumblr!


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